Brother Pau Darder waved off the strangeness of the situation. But he was intrigued to know the reason for the unexpected visit.
“Well . . .” said the judge in a halting tone, “I just wanted to let you know that . . . your exemplary deportment notwithstanding, I realize that yesterday’s crimes must have affected you deeply. I wanted to offer my condolences.”
“Thank you, most sincerely,” Brother Pau Darder responded in a priestly manner.
Judge Miquel Carbonissa stared at the crucifix on the bedside table, exhaled, tapped his foot on the tile floor, scratched his chin. He was clearly nervous, as if he didn’t know how to begin. Finally he blurted out, “Brother, do you . . .” He exhaled again before finishing the question. “Do you believe that upirs exist?”
Brother Pau Darder raised his eyebrows. “Do I believe in what?” he asked, fearing the judge had been able to guess his religious doubts.
“In upirs,” the judge whispered excitedly, wide-eyed, his face close to the priest’s. “I’m asking if you believe in the existence of the Dip—the black dog emissary of the devil—of revenants, of the undead? Do you believe in the existence of vampires, Brother Darder?”
“You were right, superintendent. There’s no trace of a dog here.”
Superintendent Muñoz was about to respond that he usually kept his mouth shut when he had no idea what he was talking about, but decided to be diplomatic: “Dammit. I’ll never get used to this lousy place.” Superintendent Muñoz let out a sigh and opened his arms wide, as if embracing the entire morgue. There were few windows, and those were high up, which meant that the huge venue—an old textile warehouse in a corner of the Gothic quarter that had been put to new use after it was seized and ransacked—had to be lit by means of a generator which, in addition to producing a thick, dull light, reeked of gasoline, and that odor was mixed with the vaguely sweet smell of formaldehyde and the stench of ammonia from the bloated, decomposing bodies. Expert evidence was essential, but obtaining it was always excruciating. As for forensic evidence—it was always nauseating. He covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief and observed Doctor Humber Pellicer going about his job with the thoroughness of a professional.
The body of the boy found in the alleyway near Pension Capell lay on the dissection table; the cadaver of Don Pere Gendrau was on the next table, hacked into pieces. Superintendent Muñoz tried to spare himself his sterile reflections on how we are all united in death, but the truth is he couldn’t avoid the thought, not even to distract himself from the view that surrounded him: row upon row of wheeled cots, covered with sheets that had once been white, atop which rested the human remains that had found their way to the morgue. Rarely were the bodies intact: here the trunk and head (but not the arms or legs) of a middle-aged woman; farther along, half of a trunk, one leg and the crushed skull of a young boy, giving the impression that he had been run over by a train; still farther, the disfigured face and mutilated body of another woman killed by God knows who. To the catastrophe that was war one had to add humanity’s perennial willingness to inflict upon itself the vilest of degradations: another stupid thought, but it was the kind of thing that popped into Superintendent Muñoz’s head. He could not avoid feeling sick when faced with the present panorama. Doctor Pellicer’s sense of humor and taxonomical zeal unnerved Muñoz. No matter how mutilated the human remains placed on the trays, one way or another the doctor tagged them all. “One way or another” was the proper expression, as it wasn’t always easy to find a suitable place to which to affix a tag. The doctor’s most recent acquisition was a headless, limbless male torso, which he had christened “Alfonso” in honor of the King of Spain, tagging the name to the man’s penis, which was of considerable size.
Doctor Pellicer finished his examination and raised his head. “You were right, as I mentioned. There are no fang marks on the wound that would be indicative of any animal, only bite marks from perfectly human canines, molars, and incisors. The priest and child were obviously killed by the same person. Neither shows any apparent sign of sexual aggression.”
“There are times when I would prefer not to be right,” the policeman mumbled to himself.
“That’s hard to believe coming from you, given the . . . how shall I put it? . . . the firmness with which you express your point of view.” The doctor scrubbed his hands with a disinfectant in a metal basin.
Superintendent Muñoz raised his eyebrows. “Excuse me, but I’m not sure what you’re referring to.”
“Well.” Doctor Pellicer smiled. “You came down pretty hard on that poor young Marist brother yesterday.”
“Ah, that,” Superintendent Muñoz said with indifference. “I can’t stand for people to stick their noses where they don’t belong.”
“That much is clear. If I can be honest with you for a moment, someone who didn’t know you might have thought it was the clergy you couldn’t stand.”
The policeman tensed. “What are you insinuating, doctor? I specifically—”
“You specifically,” interrupted the doctor, “promised not to mention the religious brothers in your report or the fact that one of the victims was himself a member of the clergy. It was a gesture that pleasantly surprised all of us there, and it could cause you serious problems if word reached your superiors, but it was tinged with contradiction after the dressing down you gave the religious. I think I can safely say that you managed to sow considerable confusion.”
Doctor Pellicer exercised a curious authority over Superintendent Muñoz, who nodded and tried to stem any possible misunderstanding. “I admit I have my own motives for disliking the Church, but it doesn’t answer to any particular stratagem: I said I wouldn’t report that we were dealing with a troop of Bible thumpers, and I didn’t. I wholeheartedly disapprove of this nonsense of religious killings, if that’s what you want to know.”
“That’s exactly what I wanted to know, superintendent,” said the doctor with a nod, causing his double chin to contract and expand. “And if you want to know the truth, I’m relieved to hear you say so.”
A conciliatory silence formed between the two men, softening the grotesque scene before them. The superintendent was reminded of the times in his childhood when a sudden silence came over the dinner table and his mother would say that an angel had passed by. The notion that an angel stopped by his house from time to time to pay him a visit had brought him happiness all through his childhood, and it struck him as reasonable that one should observe a moment of respectful silence on the occasion of such an important visit. He hadn’t given any thought to the angels or his mother for a long time, and now they had come into his mind together; it comforted him to imagine that even an abhorrent place like a morgue might be visited by angels.
Don Humbert Pellicer lit a cigarette he had rolled in a matter of seconds. The unpleasant smell of the tinned tobacco roused Superintendent Muñoz from his abstraction. “You mean you smoke in here too?” he exclaimed.
“It doesn’t seem to bother them much.” The doctor smiled, making a wide sweep of his arm.
The superintendent waved the smoke away from his face. “I don’t know how you can tolerate the odor of your tobacco, especially in this horrid place. If you have no other information you wish to share with me, doctor, I’ll leave now. It’s late and work is piling up down at the station.”
“You’re free to go when you wish, superintendent, but there is in fact something I think will interest you.” Doctor Pellicer continued to smile, exhaling smoke through his nose.
“I was afraid of that. Could we get straight to the point, please?”
“What kind of criminal could you imagine committing these two killings?”
Superintendent Muñoz shrugged. “Some kind of sadist, I suppose. The judge suggested as much, I suspected the same, and now you corroborate it: the bites on the boy’s neck were done by a man. This virtually precludes any involvement on the part of t
he anarchists. It’s more like some sort of macabre ritual. We’ll need to take a look at the crackpots we have on file.”
“Have you considered the possibility of a vampire?” asked Doctor Pellicer. The question was accompanied by a small cloud of smoke which hit Muñoz directly in the face.
“What in thunder are you saying, doctor? A vampire!” he wheezed. “Don’t you think things are complicated enough of late?”
The doctor adopted a serious expression. “The autopsy has yielded some very relevant information, superintendent: both the priest and the boy were drained of blood. Conscientiously, meticulously. The amount of blood missing from the two cadavers is most unusual and cannot be explained by the blood we saw at the crime scene. Some of it had to have been let directly from the bodies. It’s as if it had liquefied or evaporated. Or as if someone had drunk it.”
The superintendent clicked his tongue. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, doctor, but I’ve been in this field for a few years already and I have yet to encounter a vampire. On the other hand, I’ve seen plenty of bad guys and more than a few loonies. Know what I mean?”
The doctor took another drag on his cigarette. His large body stirred as though it was flea-infested. “I’m not speaking of any paranormal phenomenon, but of clinical vampirism,” he said. “I mentioned a moment ago that there is nothing here that would indicate sexual assault. By that I mean that neither the genitals nor any other part of the victims’ bodies show signs of violation. But that doesn’t mean we can rule out the fact that the motive, the primary cause behind the two killings, might have been a specific sexual deviance.”
“How about you clarify this a bit for me.” The superintendent was feeling increasingly nauseated and confused.
“Vampirism,” the doctor waxed didactic, “is a disorder in which an individual’s sexual response is aroused by the sight or ingestion of blood, either from an animal or a person. This is what psychiatry labels a paraphilia, meaning a sexual behavior where the source of pleasure in not derived from intercourse but from some activity that replaces it. Specifically, those affected by vampirism tend to climax when biting their victim, usually on the neck, in order to sever the carotid and ingest their blood . . . What is it, superintendent?”
Muñoz had turned pale. “For the love of God, would you put out that blasted cigarette of yours?”
“But of course.” The doctor squashed the cigarette butt on a copper tray. “And going back to what we were saying, as an illness, vampirism doesn’t have a clear-cut classification or diagnosis. Some authors include patients suffering from vampirism in the group of psychotics or schizophrenics, but others claim it is a specific, clearly differentiated pathology related to other paraphilia such as fetishism, necrophilia or, as you yourself suggested, sadism. Proponents of this second view named the disorder Renfield syndrome, after one of the characters in Dracula, the famous vampire novel. Did you get a chance to see the film, superintendent? With that Hungarian actor? What was his name . . . Bela Lugosi, I believe. Splendid characterization. Of course that’s a very romanticized rendering. Real vampires, now—”
“What about the top?” Superintendent Muñoz cut him off.
“Sorry?”
“The spinning top, the toy.” The officer spoke slowly, making an effort to ignore the chill and nausea running from his brain to the pit of his stomach. “There was a spinning top at the crime scene and you said you would examine it as evidence. So?”
Doctor Pellicer didn’t flinch. “I haven’t inspected it yet. Frankly, the autopsy seemed much more urgent.” He scrunched up his nose, relenting. “But I’m pretty sure you already have an opinion about the top. Am I right, superintendent?”
Surmounting his revulsion with difficulty, superintendent Muñoz managed to smile. “You are, no doubt, familiar with the expression memento mori, doctor.”
Sister Concepció was in the laundry when she got word that the mother abbess was waiting to see her in the chapterhouse. The novice enjoyed every laundry-related chore and implement: the stones used for pleating, the metal and wood irons for pressing garments, the different techniques for sewing and spinning. She especially enjoyed making lye, and frequently offered to switch shifts with other sisters in the community, as the majority found the task disgusting. She, however, relished the process, which began by collecting the ashes from the oven or the kitchen stove, the heater in the refectory, or the hearth in the chapterhouse—for thanks to the efforts of Manuel Escorza, the Capuchin convent never lacked for firewood. Sister Concepció collected the ashes with a shovel and sifted them to remove the remainder of the coal. Once the ashes were silvery and fine, she put them in a bucket and added a pot of hot water—four parts water, one part ash—stirred the mixture with a stick, covered it with a cloth and allowed it to settle for a day or so. Then it was time to pour the liquid into a wooden basin through a strainer that fit around the rim, collecting the leftover ashes and keeping the lye from spilling. Sister Concepció always marveled at the greasy texture and delicate scent of a final product that was destined to bring a modicum of cleanliness to the world.
The novice crossed the courtyard, where the nuns bent over stone sinks, armed with washboards and homemade soap bars, and then the vegetable garden, where the smell of damp earth enlivened her senses. The end of summer had been exceptionally rainy that year; the cold gave no sign of arriving any time soon, and the beds lined with vegetable seedlings had been kept so moist by the rain they hardly needed watering. The well too was practically brimming, and the coolness of the water was felt everywhere. The convent was kept so well stocked by Manuel Escorza’s man that even the animal pen held two happily-grunting pigs, a flock of hens fluffing their feathers in the fenced-off section, and a palm tree, a myrtle and bougainvillea that were a glorious sight. A lap dog—adopted by the community the same day that the war broke out—was scratching its fleas by the door to the wood shed, and a bit farther along, in the middle of the Gothic cloister, four cats lay dozing, unperturbed by Sister Concepció’s hurried steps. What could the mother abbess want with her?
Her fingers trembled as she knocked on the massive door to the chapterhouse. On the other side, distant and authoritarian, the voice of the mother abbess answered: “Come in.”
“Ave Maria Purísima,” Sister Concepció greeted her, pushing the heavy door open.
“Conceived without sin,” Mother Abbess and a male voice responded in unison, something Sister Concepció was not expecting.
Bishop Perugorría was seated in a large, plush armchair, beaming. The mother abbess was standing beside him, also smiling, though more subdued. Dressed in religious habit, they stood motionless before the glass cabinet that contained the famous black clay urns—the convent’s most emblematic treasures. The whole scene looked like an altarpiece.
“Mother Abbess. Your Excellency,” the novice whispered, head bowed, hands folded.
“Come closer, my daughter,” said the mother abbess, her voice cloying, as if addressing a pet.
Struggling to overcome her apprehension and embarrassment, Sister Concepció approached her interlocutors with four hesitant steps. She didn’t dare raise her eyes. Some twenty seconds of leaden silence followed. Finally, the mother abbess addressed her in a vexed tone: “We have sent for you, my child, because His Excellency the bishop and I are keen to express our appreciation.”
The novice’s eyes opened eagerly. “To me, Mother Abbess? But why?”
Mother Abbess shook her head. “It is not for you to pose questions, my child.”
“Forgive me, Mother Abbess. Forgive me, Your Excellency.”
“His Excellency and I,” continued the nun condescendingly, “were very impressed by your musical contribution during yesterday’s celebration.”
“Truly marvelous, my dear,” added Bishop Perrugorría. “There is no doubt but that Our Lord has bestowed on you the gift of talent.”
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sp; Sister Concepció began to wring her hands so it wouldn’t be obvious that they were sweating. She murmured, “What . . . what I do is . . . of no importance. I—”
“Nor is it for you to decide what is or is not important,” the mother abbess interrupted.
“Forgive me, forgive me! I didn’t mean . . .” She realized her thread of a voice was barely audible. In an effort not to weep, she bowed her head lower until it almost touched her chest.
The mother abbess gave the girl an ambivalent look, a mixture of severity and pity. The girl did not yet know that her parents—a prosperous magnate in the paper industry married to the daughter of a venerable line of silversmiths—had been killed during the first days of the war, and if she had joined the convent it was not through the express wishes of her parents (whom she believed had been forced to leave the country and would return as soon as the war ended) but through the intervention of the girl’s aunt, her father’s older sister, who could find no better solution for her. The mother abbess, mindful of the many favors the community of Capuchins of Sarrià owed the devout family, had accepted the custody of the young girl, who had entered the community as a novice with the name of Concepció. The episode of the sham arrest, during which the girl had shown surprising fortitude and presence of mind, her readiness to adapt to the rigors of convent life, and the power of her innate musical talent had earned Sister Concepció the admiration—and commiseration—of the mother abbess. The mixed feelings the novice evoked in her troubled the mother abbess, and precisely because of this she thought it best to treat the gifted girl in an especially distant, rigid manner, until the moment arrived when Sister Concepció could be apprised of the hopelessness of her situation.
Seeing that the interview was not progressing, the bishop rose from his chair and approached Sister Concepció; the proximity of His Excellency only made her trembling more noticeable. The bishop waited a few seconds to infuse solemnity into what he was about to say, and finally asked, “Do you know why I am here, my child? By that I mean, here among you in this convent?”
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